Our Catliolic Heritage in Texas
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almost three months after they set out from Los Adaes. Drought first and later the floods had slowed their exceedingly irksome pilgrimage. With them came four missionaries from the three missions. The few soldiers that had remained behind escorted the party and brought back twelYc four-pounders, fifteen cases of ammunition, and eight tercios (about one thousand pounds) of scrap iron. In the transportation of this property of the old presidio of Los Adaes, the mules and oxen left by Ripperda for the purpose had been used, but several of the former had died on the way. Effect on Los Adaes. Founded by Aguayo, this post had defended the frontier of New Spain against the French for more than half a century. The cession of Louisiana had made its existence unnecessary, and the king, with a stroke of the pen had put an end to a settlement that had cost thousands of pesos to his royal treasury and thousands of sacrifices to its settlers. Hardly had the bereft Spaniards left Los Adaes when bands of Indians began the destruction of the houses and the pillage of the abandoned village, unearthing the ammunition and other belongings of the presidio which had been buried. French families from Los Adaes moved into the territory of the Tejas, the Bidais, the Orcoquisacs. the Quitseys, the Ais. ancl the Nacogdoches, while some of the Spaniards who had taken refuge in Natchitoches returned likewise to their old homes and, no doubt. pillaged what was left by their companions. Thirty-five persons stole away from the cara\·an of settlers on the trail to San Antonio and returned to their homes. These and some persons at Natchitoches soon afterwards joined the small party that had remained at Lobanillo with the permission of the governor. 46 In the following chapter we will see how this determined group of dispossessed and wandering Spanish settlers was to return to east Texas and eventually establish a permanent settlement on the site of present Nacogdoches. 46 Ripperda to the Viceroy, September 28, 1773; Antonio Gil lbarbo to Oconor, January 8, 1774; Representation of the settlers of Los Adaes to Governor Ripperda, Octobtr 4, 1774, A.G. M. Historia, Vol. 51, pp. 248-251, 253-256, 259-266; Bolton, ''The Spanish Abandonment and Re-occupation of East Texas, 177 3-1779," T/,e Q11"rterl,i, IX, 86-89.
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